In the firearms industry, a niche exists for novel weapons, such as handguns that fire outsized cartridges like the .50 Browning Machine Gun (BMG). Designing a handgun for such powerful rounds requires a number of unique engineering innovations. For example, such firearms may require specialized recoil reduction mechanisms, such as found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,742,297. Additionally, cartridge extraction of such rounds from a handgun can prove difficult. Firing powerful rounds results in significant intra-chamber forces that create similarly outsized cartridge expansion. Extraction difficulty is exacerbated in this context because handgun components are relatively smaller and less robust than those found in bigger weapons for which these larger rounds are designed. The opening of breeches and subsequent extraction can prove irritating or difficult—in terms of investment of both time and/or effort.
Accordingly, there is a need in the outsized caliber handgun niche for a breech system that addresses the difficulty of first, opening a breech lock and second, extracting the used cartridge in connection with the ultra-pressurized environment found from cartridge expansion following a discharge event.